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The Albany Institute. 



is little, very little, if any, matter of just regret, I cannot mourn over 

 the disappearance of out-worn buildings and ancient inutilities. When 

 they become impediments to vivifying improvement let them perish. I 

 do miss the click-click of the paving-stones as, in the good old time, they 

 were borne down State street in the gutters by the floods of summer 

 showers. The sooner all the cobble-stone pavements are replaced \\ ith 

 granite and with asphalt the better for our reputation asa municipality. 

 I am glad that trade has taken possession of North Pearl street, and 

 that its private residences have been transmuted into or succeeded by 

 stores. The Banyer house on the southeast corner of Pearl street 

 and Steuben — perhaps more vividly by reason of its utter transforma- 

 tion is for me suggestive of a host of painful, rapturous, and most 

 sacred memories, but the loss of its old form and uses is but as a death 

 in the common course of nature. The old freestone capitol is doomed, 

 and I am sorry that it must go, although reason tells me that the 

 personal associations and the memories which endear it to me are not 

 shared by those of a younger generation and will have no influence 

 with the next. As to the memorable events and acts which have 

 occurred therein, the records of them will Burvive and their endurance 

 cannot in the least depend upon the fate of the old and effete struc- 

 ture. From my youth up to this weary day I have loved the canals 

 whose completion made our State illustrious and New York the chief 

 emporium of the continent. I have always contended that the removal 

 of any charge upon or unjust restraint of commerce was a substantial 

 victory for right policy and a general gain, and need I say that I glory in 

 the noble action of our people in making the use of their canals free 

 from all burdens ? But deep as is my love and trust in the canals, my 

 love and confidence in commerce is deeper If they prove -as I am 

 very far from believing they will prove — inadequate or inefficient as 

 regulators and as instruments of commerce, they, like any other use- 

 less burden on the people, ought to be abandoned and filled up. 



But, to return ! " Let the dead past bury its dead," is to me a mere 

 sounding folly, or as ambiguous as a Delphic oracle. Are we not to 

 recall the past — the life, the deeds, the victories, moral and patriotic, 

 of the dead, and the great sacrifices and sufferings which won them? 

 If our memories of the past enfeeble and unfit us for just and vigorous 

 action, dismiss them. But the past, whether for us replete with 

 triumph or marked with failure and with mourning, the memory of 

 our mishaps and successes and of the causes that led to them, our 

 yearnings for loved ones whom we have lost, our regretful and tender, 

 and abhorrent recollections, if we indulge them not in excess, do tend 

 to invigorate and purify us. If the past is dead and we bury it out of 



